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from fruits of our wrongdoing.
1 For if we are just, we shall, it is
true, be unscathed by the gods, but we shall be putting away from us the
profits of injustice; but if we are unjust, we shall win those profits, and,
by the importunity of our prayers, when we transgress and sin, we shall
persuade them and escape scot-free. Yes, it will be objected, but we shall
be brought to judgement in the world below for our unjust deeds here, we or
our children's children. 'Nay, my dear sir,' our calculating friend
2 will say, 'here again the
rites for the dead
3 have much
efficacy, and the absolving divinities,
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as the greatest cities declare, and the sons of gods, who became the poets
and prophets
4 of the gods, and who reveal
that this is the truth.
“On what
further ground, then, could we prefer justice to supreme injustice? If we
combine this with a counterfeit decorum, we shall prosper to our heart's
desire, with gods and men in life and death, as the words of the multitude
and of men of the highest authority declare. In consequence, then, of all
that has been said, what possibility is there, Socrates, that any man
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who has the power of any resources
of mind, money, body, or family should consent to honor justice and not
rather laugh
5 when he hears her praised? In
sooth, if anyone is able to show the falsity of these arguments, and has
come to know with sufficient assurance that justice is best, he feels much
indulgence for the unjust, and is not angry with them, but is aware that
except a man by inborn divinity of his nature disdains injustice, or, having
won to knowledge, refrains from it,
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no
one else is willingly just, but that it is from lack of manly spirit or from
old age or some other weakness
6 that men dispraise injustice,
lacking the power to practise it. The fact is patent. For no sooner does
such one come into the power than he works injustice to the extent of his
ability. And the sole cause of all this is the fact that was the
starting-point of this entire plea of my friend here and of myself to you,
Socrates, pointing out how strange it is that of all you
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self-styled advocates of justice, from the heroes of old
whose discourses survive to the men of the present day, not one has ever
censured injustice or commended justice otherwise than in respect of the
repute, the honors, and the gifts that accrue from each. But what each one
of them is in itself, by its own inherent force, when it is within the soul
of the possessor and escapes the eyes of both gods and men, no one has ever
adequately set forth in poetry or prose—the proof that the one is
the greatest of all evils that the soul contains within itself, while
justice is the greatest good.